Jojo Moyes

‘It does occur to me occasionally that making yourself cry as part of your working day is a strange way to earn a living'

By
Laura Chubb
24 August 2010

‘It does occur to me occasionally that making yourself cry as part of your working day is a strange way to earn a living. But my books usually have at least one big emotional moment, and over the course of nine books I’ve learned that if I don’t cry while writing them, I can’t expect the reader to cry while reading them. It’s a point of honour that I once made my editor sob so hard, her colleagues thought there must have been a family tragedy.

‘It takes me a year to write a book, and I treat it as a proper job. I rent a tiny office near my home, and most days I write there during school hours, aiming for 1,000 words a day. It is spartan, and the walls are plastered with newspaper pages from the period I am writing about. My office neighbours are quite used to seeing me red-eyed or cackling with glee.

‘I don’t wait for a muse; 10 years in newspaper journalism – and the time constraints of three children – taught me to write anywhere. I have written love scenes on packed trains, sudden deaths in noisy cafés. When it’s going well you become a conduit for the words, the characters start acting independently; it’s like no job on Earth. When it’s going badly, which is far more common, it is a daily test of confidence and will. I try to write through it. I firmly believe that anybody with writer’s block hasn’t done enough crummy jobs.

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